From title page: Twenty-Second Session, Held at Hot Springs, Va., December
14, 15 and 16, 1909.

From title page: Edited by W. D. Haggard, M.D.

Document

Discussion of the Papers of Drs. Guerry, Ransohoff, and Coffey [excerpt]

DR. ROSWELL
PARK, of Buffalo.—I wish to refer briefly to the tragic
event which occurred at Buffalo a number of years ago. Of course you are all
familiar with the case of President McKinley, who was shot, and in which I was
more or less concerned. This is the first time I have referred to that case
in any public place.
The remarks of Dr. Bloodgood have prompted me
to say this, that at the autopsy on President McKinley there were certain revelations
which we had not been led to expect. There was a tremendous amount of interest
taken in his case, as you all remember, and after the conclusion of the autopsy
I and others were besieged by newspaper reporters for all the information we
could give them, and all the explanations which we could furnish. In some respects
the findings were unexpected. It was at a time when we did not know much about
the surgery of the pancreas, or diseased condition of that organ, or the relation
of one to the other. In seeking an explanation for the peculiar necrosis which
we found in this [150][151] case, it was my suggestion,
based on the very meagre amount of information which we all of us possessed
at that time, that in all probability the wound of the pancreas in his case
had to do with the subsequent course of events. I really believe now it had
much to do with it, although it had not been discussed at the autopsy. The suggestion
was taken up later, and made the basis of a large amount of experimentation
by our own pathologist in Buffalo, Professor Herbert Williams, and many others,
and that unfortunate instance, I think, attracted surgical attention to this
matter in a way nothing else perhaps would have done had it not occurred. That
is a little bit of history which it is not too early now to put on record.